September 19, 2007

The elementary school in Madison was going to be named after the Hmong hero Vang Pao, but then the feds arrested him (for plotting to overthrow the government of Laos). So now there's a new school-naming policy:

...Madison schools may be named after prominent local, regional or national figures who are dead, for a locally significant geographical site, for a place of local significance or for an idea or concept that represents a broadly respected civic virtue.

I'm fascinated by the category "an idea or concept that represents a broadly respected civic virtue." First, I love the idea of naming schools after abstractions instead of honoring individual persons. Virtues can't get besmirched by arrest or embarrassing disclosures. Even if you only pick dead persons, new information can emerge about them too.

But virtues can fall in and out of favor. We see that the policy requires the virtue to be "broadly respected," and what is broadly respected today may be scorned tomorrow. And what is the breadth of the broad respect required? Madison? The United States? The world? I'm picturing Diversity Elementary School -- if it's Madison.

Name the school after the Samurai code that values honesty, respect, rectitude, courage, honor, loyalty, frugality, benevolence and the good warrior. Bushidō Elementary has the advantage of sounding both multicultural and Republican.

I prefer to think of what the school's team name and mascots would have to be. The Diversity School Justices? Their mascot would be a team of 5 old folks in black robes. Is it any sillier than the UPenn Quaker, or my high school's rival, the University School Preppers (their mascot is a cartoonish boy in a suit and tie)

4. Oppressed Activists Charter School (came to our annual fall bake sale and effigy burning, this year featuring Bush in an SUV!!)

5. The Philippe Rousseau Building (Because Montessori is too restrictive, we have developed this open model. Show up when you want! Set your own course schedule ...or don't! Get a certificate in World of Warcraft! This Friday we'll liberate the animals from the University labs ..for credit! -remember to bring your wirecutters- and on Saturday come cheer on our Fightin' Compassionate Misanthropes in soccer ...or baseball, whatever they decide is cool with us!)

I think Soglin Elementary is inevitable, 'tho he's not dead yet. That it will be out in sprawl land is slightly ironic. However, the broadly respected civic virtue for Madison must surely lead to Debate Elementary School. Nothing happens without debate in Madison.

Reminds me of the little controversy in the 1990s when a school board allowed students to vote for the name of a new school in South Carolina. The students voted for Springfield Elementary, the name of the school in The Simpsons, even though there was no town called Springfield in the vicinity. The board allowed the name to stand over protests from parents.

I went to Van Cleve in Dayton named after a city founder, Colerain in Cincinnati named after the township, Riverside in Grand Rapids after the river obviously, Washington in Bay City after George and Central HS because it was. .. Just how hard is it to not make this an issue?

My two elementary schools were named after the streets the schools were on. Ditto for my kids' two elementary schools here in Madison (Franklin and Randall). My middle school was named after the street it was on, too. It really does make them easy to find on a map.

In contrast, I have no clue what street Gompers Elementary is on, or Chavez. Lapham Elementary is nowhere near Lapham Street. That is so wrong.

I think it imperialistic to name schools at all. Why should someone's preferred historical figure or value or notion of "virtue" be chosen as superior to another?

We are insisting these impressionable children take up the chosen name, forcing it upon them, taking away, in essence, their identity and moral freedom.

I would suggest using numbers, but numbers are used as a hierarchical system of judgment. School 139 would be assumed superior to School 147, and no amount of personal achievement or effort by the students of School 147 could change this. They would be psychologically damaged and likely drift to less fulfilling careers while the students of School 5 would all become doctors and astronauts.

We need to drop names altogether and just call every school "school". The confusion this might cause would be made up by the joy of equality and the freedom of self-identity formation.

Wny not take a tip from the British of yesteryear, and call it Indefatigable or Indomitable?

Oh, wait--those aren't virtues any more, are they?

MM,

LOL! I'd extend it further, and claim that there's not enough word play in public anything--though last weekend I did make acquaintance, for the first time, with that wonderful New Jersey license plate with the lighthouse and the motto "Shore to Please".